Aunterrio Barney found guilty on all counts in 2010 fire that killed four

Monday

Aug 4, 2014 at 10:42 AMAug 4, 2014 at 9:23 PM

Andy Kravetz Journal Star public safety reporter @andykravetz

PEORIA — It might have taken four years for Aunterrio Barney to go to trial, but it took a Peoria County jury just 90 minutes Monday to find him guilty of setting a house afire in 2010, killing four people.

Barney, 37, showed no emotion when convicted of first-degree murder and arson. He immediately was placed in handcuffs. He faces a mandatory life term in prison when sentenced Sept. 4 as state law requires that when there are more than two deaths.

Across the room, friends and family of those who died in the April 21, 2010, house fire rejoiced. Tears were shed openly as a four-year wait for justice ended.

Youlandice Simmons, 24, died on her birthday. Also dying that night were her sister, Brianna Simmons, 22, and 19-year-old Darresse Roddy. Youlandice Simmons’ son, 2-year-old Darryl Miller Jr., died the next day at a Springfield hospital.

“We have been waiting for four years and it was hard,” said Tayo Faulkner, Youlandice and Briana Simmons’ sister. “I am happy because he got what he deserved and because he took so much from us and he don’t realize what he took from us.”

Added Helen Thomas, Roddy’s grandmother, who took exception to Barney’s demeanor during the trial, “We had to sit there and look at his face and he’s sitting there like he was getting bored, like nothing ever happened.

“He said he’s not a killer. He’s right. He’s not a killer, he’s a murderer.”

Prosecutors say Barney was angry at Youlandice Simmons for not returning his calls, being late to meet him and because he suspected that she was with another man. Enraged, he poured gasoline on the only stairwell to her upstairs apartment at 1212 N. University St., about 4:30 a.m. that day, they told jurors.

The fire spread quickly and blocked the only way out of the apartment. Thick black smoke filled the apartment from ceiling to floor, testified firefighters. The heat was so intense, said prosecutor Deborah Shelby during her closing argument, that it singed the victims’ skin and melted the siding of an adjacent house. Firefighters, she said, had to crawl on the floor and feel with their hands to find the bodies.

Both Shelby and colleague Donna Cruz hammered home Barney’s rage at Youlandice Simmons, playing voice mail messages, nine in all, that were left over a five-hour time frame beginning at 8 p.m. the night before and ending just before 1 a.m. The messages grow increasingly angry. In the last one, Barney can clearly be heard saying he’s gonna “get” Youlandice Simmons for “doing him that way.”

Defense Attorney Hugh Toner laid out another theory in his hourlong closing statement. Besides trashing the evidence presented in the four-day trial, he said the real arsonist was Gene Bragg, the man whom firefighters rescued from the roof that morning and the only person to survive from the apartment.

Toner questioned how it was possible that only Bragg escaped while the others died, unless he set the fire.

Cruz called that “crazy talk.” For that to happen, Bragg would have had to have trapped himself in the building, risking possible death. Or, she quipped, he was “Spider-Man” in order to get back onto the roof where he was found.

For his own part, Barney flatly denied setting the fire when he testified Monday.

Barney testified for about an hour, and for the most part, his testimony fit with what other witnesses said. The main difference was he denied buying gasoline that night, returning to the house after he left in anger and starting the fire.

He explained he was upset and angry because he couldn’t get inside the apartment to get his things. He said he was friends with Youlandice Simmons and explained away testimony about a fight the two had, saying it was blown out of proportion.

Barney said he didn’t tell his girlfriend, Sueara Foucher, that he set a fire on University, as she testified. She told jurors Barney told her that as a way to show he didn’t steal her TV.

Barney said he left the area because he was worried about his parole being violated because of the alleged TV theft.

He fled Illinois for North Carolina after reading about the fire and the deaths on the Internet. He knew he was a suspect and was afraid of capital punishment. When asked by Toner why he didn’t turn himself in, Barney said simply, “That’s not how we do things.”

And he said he confessed to police after returning to Peoria in June 2010 because he believed he was stuck.

No matter what he said to police, Barney testified, he believed he was going to jail. His options were going to jail for the rest of his life or facing lethal injection.

“I know how to survive in jail,” he said. “But I don’t know how to come back from being dead.”

While his case was pending, Gov. Pat Quinn abolished the death penalty.

Porsha Roddy, Darresse’s sister, said regardless of the verdict, her brother is gone.

“He can never come back. We’ll never get him back,” she said. “His family can still talk to him. They can visit him but we can’t. He’s gone.”

Andy Kravetz can be reached at 686-3283 or akravetz@pjstar.com. Follow him on Twitter @andykravetz.

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